Ayub Khalifa Kiynigi, the head coach of Uganda’s girl’s football team, says that the team is heading to Bahar Dar in Ethiopia to win the return leg fixture of the first round of the Under-17 Women World Cup Qualifiers against Ethiopia on Sunday.
The Federation of Uganda Football Associations (Fufa) reported that the team had been in a week-long preparation which included playing a practice match to assess individual players and departments about their readiness for the forthcoming match.
Women’s football in Uganda started in the early 90s with girls and women playing the sport for fun. The game was scanty and had no defined structures as compared to the current status in the country.
Girls and women would competitively play against the opposite sex to create competition.
The sport has grown incrementally since then with 50 teams from both genders participating in the annual national post-primary tournament as the best teams representing Uganda at the East African Secondary Schools Games.
Women’s football in Africa can be divided into distinct historical periods, emergence and development (the 1970s–1980s), growth and transition (1990s) and institutionalisation (2000–present).
However, the sport has faced numerous challenges along the way and despite being initially seen as a sport for males only women have long held leadership and support roles within football in Africa.
In South Africa, in the 1960s several women attempted to create women’s football clubs including Jessie Maseko who tried to create a girls’ high school football club in 1962.
In Cape Town, a high school team called the Mother City Girls was created and played against boys’ clubs.
By the 1970s regular matches were being played by women in Senegal and South Africa.
In partnership with ANA and Sports Leo
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